Fund teachers’ pensions with bullet train money: Letters

The state of California and its people owe the teachers’ pension fund back payments of $80 billion. Our legislators are supposed to put aside so much each year to fund the fund. But they don’t. Why not? Because they have so many other wonderful projects that they just can’t be bothered.

A Jan. 31 editorial in the Daily Bulletin pointed out just how serious this lack of funding is, and the editorial offered the easiest solution to the problem.

Just move the $68 billion dollars set aside for Gov. Jerry Brown’s pie-in-the-sky bullet train to the pension fund and we’re making progress toward fulfilling the promises made to our teachers many years ago.

Would this be a good trade? Seems to me getting rid of a train that promises to fly down the tracks for 135 miles in the middle of nowhere would be a wonderful way to give the teachers their pensions. Actually the only one hurt would be Gov. Brown’s ego, as he would not get to add the train to his accomplishments.

Looking back, Gov. Brown should have suggested the bullet train when he was governor the first time. Back then it probably would only have cost $4 billion!

— Earl Ranney, Upland

It’s been all downhill for President Obama

The behavior behind the president’s popularity decline began almost immediately after his celebrated Grant Park victory speech in 2008: an inflexible ideology and astonishing inability to lead.

Desperate to win again in 2012 he did these things:

• Openly claimed that “al-Qaida is on the run” and then fashioned false talking points about spontaneous demonstrations in Benghazi. But on the very night of the attacks the president was told “unequivocally” by his Defense Secretary Panetta that the attackers were al-Qaida affiliated terrorists, not demonstrators.

• When it was revealed that the IRS was targeting conservative groups to block their 501(c)(3) status the president declared it “outrageous” and promised a “complete investigation.” Months later DOJ attorney Barbara Bosserman, an Obama campaign supporter, was selected to head up the investigation. Days later, without earnestly interviewing a single victim, it was declared that no criminal charges would be filed.

• On Obamacare, we now know the president deliberately repeated utterly false campaign promises right up to the time when Americans learned of the lies firsthand.

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What we’ve all witnessed is a Chicago-trained politician who has abused power to further his own agenda. He has taken our debt to an extreme to buy loyalty with government hand-outs and reward campaign donors with government subsidies. He is using the IRS and DOJ to punish opponents and now plans “a year of action” with executive orders that he railed against when campaigning in 2007. America, it’s not Grant Park anymore!

— Patrick Dundas, Alta Loma

Teach today’s kids the basic facts of the world

I read with interest the story about all the new wonderful things our schools are doing. In my 76 years I have heard it all before. With all this wonderful education will our kids be able to count change without a calculator or computer point-of-sale system? Can they locate France, Japan, Korea or China on a world map? All of these things they don’t know now as revealed by various polls and surveys.

I feel so sorry for the children today and the dumbed-down education they are getting today. The push for everyone to go to college has done a huge disservice to the 80 percent of children who are not college material and need to learn a trade.